Airplanes

How Southwest Pilots Could Have Landed Safely With a Blown Engine

How Southwest Pilots Could Have Landed Safely With a Blown Engine

"A Southwest Airlines flight flying from New York City to Dallas turned terrifying Tuesday morning, when the left-side engine failed at 32,500 feet. Debris from the engine, which appears to have exploded, punctured the fuselage, leading to the violent depressurization of the cabin. Oxygen masks above every passenger dropped from the ceiling of the plane, and the pilots quickly brought the Boeing 737 to below 10,000 feet, where the 144 passengers and five crew could breathe, before making an emergency landing about 22 minutes later, in Philadelphia. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is now investigating, says that one person was killed, but did not share her cause of death. It marks the first fatality on a US airline flight over American soil since 2009. Photos show a gaping hole where a window was on the 737, and outside a mangled mess of engine cowling, with the white-on-blue Southwest lettering crumpled like a soda can. According to a local NBC affiliate, passengers say the woman who died, sitting in the 14th row, was partially drawn out of the broken window before being pulled back in."